Bailee

Cross-references

bailee (custodian)

n. a person with whom some article is left, usually pursuant to a contract (called a "contract of bailment"), who is responsible for the safe return of the article to the owner when the contract is fulfilled. These can include banks holding bonds, storage companies where furniture or files are deposited, a parking garage, or a kennel or horse ranch where an animal is boarded. Leaving goods in a sealed rented box like a safe deposit box, is not a bailment, and the holder is not a bailee since he cannot handle or control the goods. (See: bailment, bailor)

bailee

BAILEE, contracts. One to whom goods are bailed.
2. His duties are to act in good faith he is bound to use extraordinary
diligence in those contracts or bailments, where he alone receives the
benefit, as in loans; he must observe ordinary diligence of those bailments,
which are beneficial to both parties, as hiring; and he will be responsible
for gross negligence in those bailments which are only for the benefit of
the bailor, is deposit and mandate. Story's Bailm. Sec. 17, 18, 19. He is
bound to return the property as soon as the purpose for which it was bailed
shall have been accomplished.
3. He has generally a right to retain and use the thing bailed,
according to the contract, until the object of the bailment shall have been
accomplished.
4. A bailee with a mere naked authority, having a right to remuneration
for his trouble, but coupled with no other interest, may support trespass
for any injury, amounting to a trespass, done while he was in the actual
possession of the thing. 4 Bouv. Inst. n. 3608.

As for Mr and Mrs Da Rocha's argument that there was no clear separating line in some cases between an involuntary bailee and a gratuitous bailee, the position in law was that correctly stated by the primary judge: i.

Often an insurer pays its insured for property that was damaged by someone else (for example, the laundry that damaged the restaurant's tablecloths in the previous comment on the no benefit to bailee provision).

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